Breastfeeding is essential for child survival but globally less than fifty percent of infants receive adequate breastfeeding. Gaps in breastfeeding knowledge and misinformation are widespread. Mass media aims to motivate mothers and families, encourage care-seeking, improve social norms, and counteract misleading advertising. However, the costs and coverage of mass media are not well documented. Our study provides a cost-accounting of four large-scale mass media interventions and coverage obtained through mass media. We retrospectively calculated annual costs and costs per beneficiary of mass media interventions based on expenditure records in four countries. The interventions were a part of multi-component breastfeeding strategies in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Vietnam. Annual costs ranged from 566,366 USD in Nigeria to 1,210,286 USD in Vietnam. The number of mothers of children under two years and pregnant women ranged from 685,257 to 5,566,882, and all designated recipients reached during the life of programs ranged from 1,439,040 to 11,690,453 in Burkina Faso and Bangladesh, respectively. The cost per mother varied from USD 0.13 USD in Bangladesh to 0.85 USD in Burkina Faso. Evaluations showed that mass media interventions reached high coverage and frequent exposure. This analysis documents the financial costs and budgetary needs for implementing mass media components of large-scale breastfeeding programs. It provides annual costs, cost structures, and coverage achieved through mass media interventions in four low- and middle-income countries.
Keywords: Bangladesh; Burkina Faso; Nigeria; Vietnam; breastfeeding program; financial cost; mass media.